“Oh, just come here,” said Josiah 2. “It’s easier if we show you.”
He turned on his heel and marched out of the room. Freddy glanced at Cuerva Lachance, but she was gazing at the ceiling in apparent fascination. “There are all these little white bumps. Why are there little white bumps everywhere?”
Freddy and Josiah looked at each other, then shrugged and moved out into the hallway.
Josiah 2 was standing impatiently at the bottom of the stairs. “Here,” he said. When she reached him, he pushed her against the frame of the door and marked her height.
“Hey,” said Freddy, “you did that—”
“Five minutes ago,” said Josiah. “Look.”
Freddy looked. She continued looking for quite some time.
Finally, she turned to Josiah, who was sitting on the bottom step. “That’s not possible.”
“It’s called a growth spurt,” said Josiah. “You got yours late for a girl. Six inches in a year and a half isn’t bad.”
“But … but I’m short. All the other girls got taller years ago. I’m supposed to have practically stopped growing by now!” Freddy’s eyes kept being drawn back to those marks on the frame.
“You’re still short,” said Josiah. “Well, I suppose you count as average now. But you’re average for fourteen, not sixteen.”
It felt as if someone very large had sat on her chest, squeezing all the air out of her lungs. Finally, she managed to wheeze, “Sixteen?”
“Did you think time was standing still for you while you were travelling?” said Josiah. “Surely you noticed some changes.”
“I know. I have little breasts now,” said Freddy. “But I’m not sixteen!”
Cuerva Lachance, wandering down the stairs, said, “When’s your birthday?”
“I … what? March tenth.”
“Oh, my mistake. You’re still fifteen,” said Josiah, “but only just. You’ll be sixteen by the time you go back to your family.”
“I think there’s a mirror in the luggage somewhere,” said Cuerva Lachance, “though we may have broken it when we crashed into the tree.”
“No, I carried it in. I’ll get it,” said Josiah 2, and he nipped into the living room, looking relieved to escape.
“But I can’t … but people will notice,” said Freddy. “I’m half a foot taller than I was this morning!”
“And that’s not all,” said Cuerva Lachance. “Did I say that out loud?”
Freddy said, “What do you mean, that’s not all?”
“Take a look,” said Josiah 2, coming back out into the hall with a full-length mirror under his arm. He held it up in front of her.
Freddy saw a stranger: a girl with long curly hair, several shades lighter than the plain brown she was used to. Her skin, on the other hand, was several shades darker. The shape of her face had changed. It seemed longer and more angular. Her cheeks were thinner, her nose more prominent. At fourteen, she had looked eleven or twelve. At nearly sixteen, she looked almost grown up. The breasts she had known about, but she hadn’t been paying attention to the hips. Somehow, she had those now, too.
“No one is even going to recognise me,” she breathed, staring at the mirror in horror.
“Well, it’s not as bad as you think,” said Josiah. “You look like your own older sister. We’ll cut your hair just before you go back, and we’ll get you something baggy to wear. The tan’s pretty deep, so I’m not sure about that. But all right, yes, you’re going to have some problems.”
“Not as many as your imagination is telling you right now,” said Cuerva Lachance. “People see what they want to see.”
Freddy had been having the same thought a few hours and/or a couple hundred years ago, but she wasn’t sure it applied here. “Maybe if I’d been gone for a month. I’ll have been gone for five minutes.”
“You could stretch it to an hour and say you were sulking,” said Josiah.
“Try not to worry about it.” Cuerva Lachance patted her reassuringly on the head. “You’ll have other things to worry about soon. You’re living with us now. We can bake cookies. It’s possible I’ll accidentally make the closets come alive, but I’m sure you’ll be able to deal with that.”
She drifted into the living room, humming. The Josiahs cast each other long-suffering looks before they followed. Freddy stood alone in the front hall. The bottom had fallen out of everything. It wasn’t just that there wasn’t a place for her at the moment. It was that when her place did become available again, she wasn’t sure she was going to fit back into it.
15
“Get up,” said Josiah the next morning. He was sitting on her feet.
Nothing she saw when she woke up ever confused her any more. There was no point in being confused when everything was constantly changing. Freddy opened her eyes. She was in the bedroom she and Josiah had been hiding in the day before. Her bed wasn’t really a bed; it was a futon mattress Cuerva Lachance had absentmindedly created from nothing.
There was only one bed. A second bed was what she had noticed missing a year and a half—or, technically, half a day—ago. Knowing Josiah, she didn’t find this surprising. “Well, obviously,” Josiah 2 had said the day before as they manoeuvred a couch into position. “What would I do with a bed?”
“You could try sleeping in it,” Freddy had pointed out.
“You people waste far too much time sleeping,” Josiah 2 had said.
Freddy had grown used to Josiah’s behaviour at night. He never did sleep. He just walked around and fidgeted and occasionally engaged in monologues when other people were trying to sleep. Cuerva Lachance slept, though not always, and usually not where anyone could see her. She said she did it because it was fun and beat listening to Josiah all night.
“I’m tired,” said Freddy. “Why don’t you go talk to yourself?”
“Myself has gone to school,” said Josiah. “First day, remember? I spent the night filling him in on certain essential details. He’s being tormented by fiends in human form even as we speak.”
Freddy pulled the covers over her head. “What do you need me for?”
“Well, I’m bored,” said Josiah, “but that’s not really it. It’s the whole living-in-a-house-with-Cuerva-Lachance thing. It’s better if you’re awake when she is. Fewer unexpected things can happen to you that way.”
Groaning, Freddy sat up. “I have only one outfit, and it needs to be washed.”
“You can borrow something from me for now. I’m not all that much bigger than you any more.”
“How much better that makes me feel,” said Freddy. “Give me the clothes and get out.”
She spent half an hour in the shower, just because she could. There hadn’t been many showers during her travels. Josiah’s jeans turned out to be only a little roomy but about three inches too long. She had to borrow a belt as well, then roll up the cuffs. The T-shirt was too big, but as it was a T-shirt, that didn’t matter. Freddy preferred her clothing baggy. Cuerva Lachance gave her some underwear and a bra that were far too big. She claimed they were new. Freddy decided not to think about it.